Interpretive perspectives on the business case and neoliberal accounting

Renée Palmer, Andrea Brunt and Glen Lehman

Chapter 12 in Handbook of Critical Environmental Accountability and Sustainability, 2026, pp 185-202 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The theme of this chapter is that an interpretivist perspective can be used to challenge conventional notions of accounting for sustainability. This chapter aims to initiate an auto-critique of accounting for sustainability through an examination of the meanings and contradictions in sustainable development. This leads to the role for interpretation in environmental accounting: to explore the limits of the business case and its relationship with scientific naturalism. Interpretation refashions a commitment to moral theory and examines the phenomenological features of humanity's being-in-the-world. This interpretation challenges the business case while offering a much broader critique against an empiricist epistemology that undergirds modern business and environmental accounting.

Keywords: Dearth; Engagement; Nature; Stephen K. White; Engagement; Connolly; Habermas; Taylor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781802201765
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